


Grave

by TheOddAngle



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Graphic Description of Corpses, Possible Squick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6096229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOddAngle/pseuds/TheOddAngle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month after Simmons was taken by the monolith, May sends an old, trusted friend to help find out what happened. But, to help Fitz may mean getting closer to death than anyone would want....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Shaded Welcome

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been tumbling through my head since the end of Season 2. It insisted on being written, especially as season 3 started. There's been a lot of changes since, but ... I couldn't get it out of my head. Especially not as things started to get really creepy....
> 
> I'll be posting more over the next few days.
> 
> Enjoy.

When cares, with time have worn away, will you come and sit and stay by my side and chat with me of days gone by and yet to be?

Gravestone inscription

Do you want to know a secret? Old gods never die. They just change form. They’re still worshiped, they’re still revered. We just don’t always see that’s what we’re doing. Ever cross yourself when you pass by a graveyard? Hold your breath and say a prayer in passing for the dead? To whom was that sent? To your ancestors? To a god who watches over the dead? Think about it.

J.P. Anthony

~*~

She arrived a month after May left. 

A month after the monolith had changed his alchemical structure leaving him bereft of almost half of his molecular weight. 

He'd grown... Well, not used to new faces, that wasn't the right word, but as none of the new faces had even a tenth of what he'd needed to find her, he ignored them and largely everyone else. Bobbi couldn't help, not really, but she tried to make up for who was missing in the lab. Coulson just wanted him to build, and that was a distraction, but he whipped off plans for him anyway. Anything to get him off of his back. To let him look. Everyone else, even Mack and Sk--Daisy had given up on finding Jemma. He was grateful that at the very least they let him work. 

But the new faces were mostly a nuisance. He didn't bother learning one from the next, and he might have gone on that way if Bobbi hadn't forced an introduction. _Spooky,_ Bobbi called her, even as the woman winced. "She's a friend of mine from --"

"A ways back," the woman said quietly. She wasn’t as tall as statuesque, blonde Bobbi, but not many were. Even so, this friend of Bobbi’s in her flat boots had an inch on him, at least, not that he was looking. “Please, don’t call me that. Bobbi likes to perpetuate cruel jokes.” She shook her head, dark curls bouncing. Standing there together, they looked like light and dark personified. 

Not that Bobbi’s friend was as dark as Mack. But, the harsh lights of the lab, which cast everyone in a sickly light, tarnished her skin making her look like a Saint-Gaudens sculpture he’d seen on a trip to D.C. -- eerie and somewhere between old bronze and old brass. Certainly befitting the title “Spooky.” If she’d come to him wearing a hood, his heart probably would have stopped wondering if Death had found him.

“If I wanted to perpetuate cruel jokes, I would have introduced you as the Patron Saint of Lost Things, Anthony.” At that, the woman’s lips twisted up. “And I know how you feel about Judith.” That earned Bobbi a laugh from the woman, a sound that was expansive and startling. A flock of interns jumped and darted off at the sound. Such sounds had seemed to profane this place. No one was used to it anymore. It hit him like a like a shaft of light in the eyes and he had to reassess who was light and who was dark. He grunted. 

But, the conversation between Bobbi and the stranger continued without paying him mind. “And I’m sorry, I’m just never going to get used to calling you Dr. Anthony,” Bobbi was saying. The woman snorted.

"Please," she told him, "Call me Seph. Or Anthony. Either is preferable." She put out a hand to shake and he just stared at her dumbly, not letting go of the parts in his hand for some thing he could care very little for that Coulson had insisted was a priority over fruitless attempts to figure out how to make the monolith give up its secrets.

She didn't seem offended, dark eyes as impassive as the rock in storage as she lowered her hand. "A pleasure to meet you regardless Dr. Fitz.”

“It’s Agent Fitz.” 

She blinked. Slowly. She appeared to be digesting the correction rather than hurt by its swift sharpness. “Pardon me. _Agent_ Fitz," She amended herself. 

Bobbi tried to encourage him to speak with one of those prodding looks of hers. But, no. He had other secrets to plumb than whatever was meant by Bobbi's less than subtle nudge. And Seph.... After a long moment, she nodded to him and looked to Bobbi with a shade more warmth. He was dismissed. He could almost feel strings snap as she did it. “You’re busy. Maybe another time then.” She smiled. But there was something behind the twist of her lips. Something probing. Sad. She turned and was gone from the lab in an economy of strides that Bobbi, hobbled as she was with walking casts and crutches scrambled to match.

He put her - and light - out of his mind before the door had closed.

*


	2. Last Supper

That night, however, he was faced with her again. She was still with Bobbi. The two were in the Mess, mugs of something between them and Daisy, looking as thick as thieves. Daisy, who saw him first and tried to wave him over. He wasn’t entirely keen, but Skye--Daisy was close to making a scene before he grabbed a bowl and a mug of something hot. Perhaps if he ate with them Skye would stay off of his case for a while, but he wasn’t all that interested in breaking bread with a stranger; a strange woman with dark, piercing eyes like the depths of that damned rock and a laugh like an explosion.

“Fitz! You have to meet Seph! Weirdest thing ever -- She knows May. Calls her Mel.” She shot an eager glance at the woman across the table. “How do you get away with that?”

That perked his ears. "You know Agent May?" _Wait._ “You call her Mel?”

Seph’s lips quirked and she glanced at Fitz. “I’ve known her longer than I’ve known Bobbi. You might say she introduced us. Nice to see you again, Agent. I hope things went well with your experiment."

“How?” Daisy repeated, not to be deterred.

Seph gave a small shrug. “Same way she’s probably the only person I can think of who gets away with my given name. She knows too much. I know where her bodies are buried. It’s an even trade.” The Mona Lisa smile made her statement all the more frightening. Hers was a strange voice. It was hard to place where she might be from. There was something of a lilt that was almost Irish, something flat and broad that was almost American, and something almost round enough to be Canadian, but just not enough. Familiar and unfamiliar and just on the edge of his mind. Damn those broken connections.

Daisy’s brow furrowed. “And May sent you?”

“She asked me for a favor. I said I’d do what I can. Mel, I owe more than I can repay. And until recently her asking was rare.”

Cautiously he slid in next to Daisy, who seemed all manner of unimpressed by that answer. “But what is it she asked you to do?” Bobbi looked at both Daisy and Fitz before dropping her eyes down to her mug, suddenly studying the contents. Fitz was not always adept at people, but this was a cue he needed no help with. _She was in on whatever it was._

Seph took a deep sip of her drink before answering. “I’ve been told it’s a bit of a sensitive issue.”

“Hello. You’re sitting in the middle of a spy agency. Everything is sensitive,” Daisy groused. “Seriously though. You said you were an archaeologist, right?”

She nodded. “Folklore archaeology.”

“So Atlantis and all that?” Seph nodded. “But what could an archaeologist -- sorry folklore archaeologist -- do for SHIELD?” Skye pressed.

Seph shook her head. “Not for SHIELD. For Mel.” She looked sideways to Bobbi, “I do favors for friends.” She gave Bobbi a knowing look. “Good friends and a good story. I have an ear for a good story, an eye for detail and an uncanny knack for finding what’s missing. I have a talent for finding…Things. People. Occasionally, I do it without provocation. I’ve found and put back lost artifacts before because of the itch.” 

“The Patron Saint of Lost Things, Bobbi said,” Fitz remembered. Somehow even the short wince looked elegant. Which was entirely unfair.

She gave Bobbi a gimlet eye. “Bobbi, would you like to field that one?”

“I may call her that because she was keeping tabs on Hunter for me from time to time.”

“And ‘Spooky?’” 

“She is really, ridiculously, improbably, Index-worthy accurate,” Bobbi said softly. “Even if she doesn’t look, she’s been able to tell me exactly where something -- or someone was. At that moment.”

“With in reason,” Seph said. “I’m not a psychic. Still…” She cocked her head and hummed a note under her breath. “Hunter’s in the hangar, by the way. And seems quite healthy,” Seph said casually. “Although, I imagine being on base together you didn’t need me to tell you.” Bobbi blushed. Fitz felt like he lost all of the blood in his face.

Sensitive. Uncanny knack for finding…. Fitz could see where this was going. His vision greyed out around the edges and his hands felt numb. Cold. He only barely heard Daisy ask, “Why aren’t you a P.I. or something, then? Or SHIELD?”

Seph shook her head. “It’s not a very good idea. I’ve been trained and do help with search and rescue, but I don’t think I’d make very good material for any risky every day job. Someone once suggested process serving or bounty hunting. The pay may be better, but let’s just say it’s better I take the path I trod. If I go another, it’s likely I’ll go a very bad way.” Something in her face was harder and sharper than obsidian. There was a memory behind that look. Something kindred to a feeling in his own breast, Fitz thought. “May pulled me out once,” she admitted. “I don’t think she’s capable of a second run. It’s why I stay off the Index. Why she doesn’t try the recruitment pitch. She knows I couldn’t say no to her. And at the same time...”

Bobbi said softly, “You’ve never talked about it.” Seph’s face softened. 

“And unless I need to, it’s better I don’t. It’s why I keep turning you down when you say come work here. Really, it’s better that way.”

Fitz cleared his throat. Tried to catch his breath. “She sent you here about Simmons.” All activity at their table at least clattered to a stop. He couldn’t tell if it went any farther than the world of their table. His vision, his hearing all tunneled onto the woman before him.

Seph nodded. “She wanted me to see what I could find out. That the usual channels were stumped. She said it was something of a two-fer. An artifact was involved and the only other artifact expert was a man she didn’t trust.”

“Is she alive?” It came out strangled.

“Best I can read, yes. But that’s part of why I’m here. I need more than Mel could give me. I needed to find the start of the trail and I needed an expert on your Doctor Simmons. She said I could find both here with….”

“Me? How the fuck am I supposed to help you help me?” It came out as a shout. If there had been activity in the cafeteria, that pretty cleanly ended it. 

“It’s something I could explain,” she said softly, and he realized she was still using the same quiet, even tone where he’d gone over to shouted broken sounds. “But you’d have to listen to me first. And trust me.”

“Why should I trust you? I don’t even know you.”

“And there’s the rub. I don’t know you. I don’t know … _her_. Until I do, I’m stymied. I have to do it the old fashioned way, which I’m sure is treading well trod paths at this point. Please. Let me help. Help me, help you.”

Fitz looked at Bobbi and Daisy, who for the first time in ages seemed to have eyes full of hope as they looked from this stranger who would be Simmons savior and to him. They seemed to believe he should be happy. 

“You said it was sensitive.”

“I believe her words were tread lightly.”

Fuck that.

He stormed from the room

*


	3. Rest of Pieces

Fitz briefly retreated to the laboratory, but it didn’t give him a sense of peace. His hands shook so hard he was sure that if he touched anything he’d throw it. Or break it. Or blow it up. Intentionally or not.

He let his feet take him from there. And found himself at her door. His fingers brushed the wood. _Jemma…._ What would she say about this addition?

Likely “there’s no such thing as a psychic.” She’d said it often enough that he could almost hear her. Her voice rang and echoed vault of his mind, his chest. That pang in his chest struck again, so he reared towards the facts.

Seph said she wasn’t psychic.

But, if she wasn’t psychic, how would she have known that Jemma was alive. Not that he didn’t want to believe. Everything in him wanted to believe it. There was a conviction there. It was truth. But. How. Did. She. Know?

He turned and made a beeline for the hanger.

Hunter was there, rifling through a crate. He practically slammed his head on the lid when Fitz barked, “What do you know about Seph Anthony?”

“Who, mate?”

“Do you know Seph Anthony? Bobbi called her Spooky…?”

“Oh! I know the bird you mean! Friend of Bob’s. Yeah big.” He gestured with a hand. “Dark hair. Burnished bronze skin. Way of staring through a bloke as if she could see his soul?” Fitz shrugged.

“In the lab, her skin was…”

“Darker? Yeah, that kind of lighting and shadows would do it. I had a run-in with her back a while ago. Haven’t seen her in years. But, when I met her, she told me ‘Call your wife.’” He did a fair impression of her strange voice. “Handed me an unlisted number, too. Direct to a burn phone. Bobbi seemed almost relieved when I got her on the line. Why do you ask?”

“I just met her. I thought if you knew her.”

Hunter peered at him out of the corner of his eye. “Dunno what to tell you. She's Bob’s mate not mine. But you haven't given up on Simmons yet, have you?”

“...She says she can help….”

Hunter shrugged and rubbed the scruff on his head. “Maybe she can. She delivered that message to me when I was in deep with some things and was laying low. Not even my own mum knew where and _she_ shows up on my doorstep.”

“How though?”

“Damned if I know. Women are a mystery at the best of times, right?”

Fitz grunted. It wasn't an agreement. Not by a long shot. With the exception of her heart, he'd rarely had trouble reading Jemma. Everything she thought was writ large in her eyes. In her soul. Their brains had always been on the same wavelength. Even after her debatable success with Hydra, his broken mind and body, and their own estrangement, her brain and his had been as ever connected. How else had he managed than to live with the ghost of her chasing his steps in the lab? Jemmaginary may have been a pale facsimile, but when Jemma had returned, she'd connected to his thoughts just as well as before, even if he hadn't wanted to admit it. Rubbing at the pain behind his breastbone, the missing hand on his shoulder, he rotated on the axis of his heel and left the hanger, leaving Hunter behind him confused about his passing.

  
*


	4. Misericord

When he returned to the lab, it wasn't empty. The techs had gone and the interns. But in their place, standing with her arms crossed over Jemma’s workspace was Seph. She didn't turn to look at him. She also touched nothing, but still he stormed forward intent to roust her away from the space. 

Seph was staring at the pictures on the desk. Jemma called it a small shrine to her family; a picture of her with her parents from some trip they’d taken years ago, one from graduation at the Academy, Fitz and Simmons with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The third panel of the triptych was a picture taken in the early days of working on the bus. 

Somehow she’d roped everyone in for a picture, even Coulson and May. Skye -- she was Skye then -- had her arms wrapped tight around the waist of who would have been Ward if Jemma hadn’t had Skye photoshop in Captain America’s face. (Truthfully, there’d been an argument between them about whether Thor or Cap was more appropriate. Cap had won out by a _slim margin._ ) 

Jemma stood in the middle of the shot, her smile was just a little too wide and excited, Fitz had his arm slung over her shoulder and hers was around his waist. Jemma’s other hand was wrapped around May’s wrist as if dragging her reluctantly into the frame. May stood awkwardly stiff on one side of the cluster, but still inside the shot; Coulson stood her opposite on the right flank, looking almost relaxed. The day it had been taken was a good day, but both May and “Captain America” had been Ops level serious. As he came to find out, both had their reasons for holding themselves apart from the group, very different reasons, although neither of which he wanted to think about. At least May had been on their side in the end.

“I was 13 when Mel and I first crossed paths.” She said it so quietly he wasn't sure he'd heard it until she continued. “I'd inadvertently stepped into a SHIELD investigation. All I knew was that the men in that house were responsible for what I'd found when I'd found my sister. It took me six days to find her. A month to find them.” She shrugged. “It would have taken less time, but a 13 year old girl can't drive. Can't just disappear for hours after your baby sister’s been taken without setting off your parents. I was hunting them. I'd never felt that kind of hate before. If Agent Melinda May hadn't stopped me, I would have tried to kill them. Can't say I'd have been successful, but I was ready to kill. I have the feeling you understand that. Intimately.”

His fists were clenched. He said nothing. Maybe if he stayed as still as stone Seph wouldn’t insinuate herself into the cracks he felt forming. He didn’t know why she was telling him this other than to gain his trust. But, will alone was keeping those cracks from shifting, keeping him from losing himself in a pile of rubble and dust.

She glanced over at him, eyes haunted. “May promised that they would be punished for what they’d done. That all I needed was to hand over what I had on them. And I did. Along with the weapon I’d been hiding -- I found a gun, don’t ask me where. When I need things, I find them. I think it convinced her that I wasn’t just some Nancy-Drew-Wannabe.”

“Turns out my sister wasn’t their only victim. And in prison, it turns out that other inmates don’t appreciate sadistic bastards who…. hurt small children. They lived for a while into lifetime sentences. But, they lived miserable ones. Before he died, one of them spent his last 6 years eating and … shitting out of tubes. Someone took considerable umbrage to his handiwork. I’ve never been told who did it, but I think of them every holiday and consider sending the cell block cookies. I’ve lost and found a lot of people, Agent Fitz. But, there are some who hurt more than others. There are some who leave deeper scars. I never thought I couldn’t forgive. But … It’s been 20 years and I just can’t stop hating them. Death doesn’t stop my hating them.”

Her eyes were dry, but he could feel hurt coming off of her in waves. He’d never really sensed moods before of anyone other than Jemma. The name bringing another pang to his chest. He rubbed his own shoulder, his breastbone, to soothe that ache that seemed to ring louder in response to whatever was going on with Seph.

She took a deep breath and he felt that pressure coming from her subside. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to control sometimes when I stop and think about it. Because… of how I do what I do, if I’m not careful, what I feel strikes a chord. Which will make more sense if I can tell you what both Mel and Bobbi know about me.”

“You’re a metahuman of some sort.” He blurted.

She nodded her head in a side-to-side, almost non-committal way. She flip-flopped her hand. “There are parts of it that anyone could learn, and oddly it may be the one that sounds the strangest if I were to explain it. Mostly because the best I can do is part mad philosophy, some string theory, and a little bit of the heisenberg uncertainty principle.”

He blinked. Whatever he’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. She shrugged. “Just because my academic specialty is archeology, folklore and history doesn’t mean I haven’t any use for hard science. Or interest. Or ability. After hearing Mel talk about you for so long, I actually was looking forward to speaking with you at some point about some mechanisms I found on a recent dig. I had some theories and I wanted to run them by you. But that’s a little bit of a side track.” There was something of a guilty look on her face.

“What part could I learn?” He asked.

She took a deep breath and hummed a soft note under her breath. Her fingers reached out to the air between them and plucked … _something._ He felt the faintest echo near his sternum and he gasped. It felt like she’d strummed a bass string attached to him. It rang for the barest second and stopped, but the strangeness lasted. He rubbed the spot on his chest below the breastbone and wondered why he’d felt it in practically the same place where he’d felt the pang for Jemma.

“What in the name of all that is holy was that?”

“I call it a heartstring. We’ve only just met, but… when people share stories, interests, what-have-you, they also share ideas, atoms, energy. The stronger the connection, the stronger the bond, the stronger it rings, if you will. The stronger the connection, the more the two people share until it may seem like they share thoughts -- and perhaps they do across the bonds of their atoms. You don’t know me, but I do know some about you. Through Mel. It’s Mel’s bond with you and your team that I could find this place. I could hear the way it rang and find the strings of it to this place. When I can, I use the connections to find people, places, things. One of many ways I find … stuff. But, in order for it to work best, I need the strongest connection, to hear and follow. To find the right string, I need someone to talk to me about that person, place or thing. The more I hear, the stronger the memories, the deeper the connection, the better I’m able to trace it over distance and time. And if I know that person myself, I can use my own connection to … hear things about them.”

“Like Hunter in the garage.”

“Yes. It’s not psychic ability. It’s echolocation.”

“That feeling, like a bass string…”

“I can hear it. And feel it. But I’ve trained myself to pick up odd-frequency vibrations.” 

He stared at her a moment, thoughts rolling like marbles on a tilting table. “And you could teach me? I could find Jemma? Know if she’s okay?”

She nodded slowly. “I can teach you. To hear her. Or any of your friends really. I couldn’t exactly show you how to trace someone you don’t have a connection to, I’m afraid. But, if it turns out you have an ear for it, I’m sure you’ll get there on your own.” She took a deep breath. “Tell me about her. The first thing that comes to mind. Tell me everything you can, every detail.”

His eyes ranged over her workspace. So tidy, so precise. But here and there were personal things. A tiny tardis of his own make he’d gifted her a long time back. Handwritten notes. The pictures. A second glance at the academy photo clenched his throat. Dear God, they both looked so young. He picked up the picture of the team on the Bus and stroked her image before placing it back exactly as it had been.

“Jemma….” Her name came as soft as the sigh of wind high in the deep woods deepening to the groan of an old oak waving branches in a gale. So much weight in just her name. “She’s been my best friend for so long… and I didn’t realize she was more than that until I thought I’d lost her. And when I hadn’t, it took us forever to find our sync again. But I can’t… It hurts not to have her here. Even if we don’t speak and don’t touch, it feels so much better to have her near than not.”

Seph’s soft sympathy didn’t soothe the edges of his hurt that still felt glass sharp. She leaned a hip against a low table and gestured for him continue.

“She… Laughs at the strangest things. She loves adventure. Her scientific curiosity knows no bounds …It always gets her into so much trouble, but she always comes up laughing. Those eyes of hers take my breath away when she gets excited. When they’re full of laughter.”

“She once spent three days taking care of me when I was laid up after getting a wisdom tooth removed and simultaneously getting the flu. It was awful. My mouth was swollen and there was so much blood. And mucus. She was just so sweet and calm about it. She just kept pouring me tea. She made me a great big pot of soup. Giving me drugs. We watched hours of _Doctor Who._ And, for some surreal reason, _Silence of the Lambs._ I’m gagging on blood and phlegm and she’s calmly watching Hannibal and Clarice talk about Chianti and fava beans. When I complained, she just sighed and said ‘Oh, Fitz’ and shook her head at me. And although she denies it to this day I swear that she was laughing at me. ”

“She does that a lot. She laughs and sighs my name. ‘Oh, Fitz.’” He said in his best imitation of her voice. “I think I’d happily harp on anything just to hear her say that. There’s this thing that happened -- I’d brought a sandwich into the lab and it ended up next to one of her biological samples, this cat liver.” He shuddered. “Believe me, I recognize how bad an idea it was to bring the thing into the lab, the risk I ran. But I have told so many people about it, harped to her about it just so I can hear her argue with me about it. To say ‘Oh, Fitz!’” His chest ached.

He hadn’t noticed she’d moved until suddenly Seph was standing beside him. He thought for a moment she was going to put her hand on him, offer him comfort but instead she played the air in front of him like a harp. The spot where the vibration started was the same one where the thought of her had ached. It radiated from that point through his whole being. He wasn’t sure if he was a guitar, the string or living in the sound hole of some cosmic instrument, but he vibrated. He rang. 

He could almost hear the tone of it. Almost. 

But he felt that same sound wave move from that spot anchored in his chest, traveling down along some thread. It took a while, but the feeling bounced back to him. As it rang back up along the the metaphysical tether between him and Jemma, something changed in Seph’s expression. It was at once terrible and beatific. He could hear her softly hum a tone under her breath, and then the sound wave crashed back into him. And he could feel Jemma like she was here with him. But she wasn’t. Where ever she was she was alive, but she was not well. She was scared. And something prickled in his nose like dry earth and sulphur.

“Mother of all things…” he gasped.

“You felt that, did you?” Seph chuckled. “That’s an exceptionally good sign, Agent Dr. Fitz.”

He dropped down into Jemma’s chair. His hands were shaking like leaves. “She’s so scared.”

Seph’s smile dropped. “You felt that, too. I’m sorry that … was unpleasant.” Sympathy filled her eyes. “But, she’s alive. The alternative is infinitely worse. Believe me.” Her jaw tightened and he was certain she was not telling him something. Whether it was something about herself or about Jemma, he couldn’t tell. “But, this certainly gives me a trail to follow.”

He felt himself harden like stone. “It won’t get you far,” he said. Again a sucker punch. He leaned against the workbench, staggered for a moment. “She didn’t go anywhere. The rock swallowed her whole.”

It was her turn for confusion. Her brows furrowed with it. “The artifact is a rock? Has this rock tried to eat anyone else? Has it spit her back up?”

“Yes. No. It’s shifted again, but she wasn’t there when it did.”

“But she’s the furthest away I’ve ever felt…” She muttered. “A rock, you say. Well, that’s where we start.”

*


	5. The Dog at Death's Door

Even with an easy gait, he felt as though with every step they should be sneaking. Like they were on the verge of getting caught. Still, in his previous experience breaking into places he was forbidden entry to, confidence carried the day.

This did not, of course, preclude others from joining their little band of crusaders. As they turned the corner, heading for the stairs to go down deeper into the base to where the Monolith was kept hidden, Bobbi and Daisy lay in wait. They’d been talking quietly, using the stairs for their privacy and both seemed shocked that he’d come upon them, Seph in tow.

He brushed by them, squeezing himself between them and the railing to do so. He didn’t stop. Behind him, Seph said, “We’re on a mission.”

The other two said nothing, but before he reached the first twist of the stairs, there were three sets of footfalls - and the chop-chop of crutches - close behind him. When they got there, Bobbi lingered a few steps away from the door. Skye was a few short steps behind her. 

“Got to admit, it’s a little like the grave down here,” Skye said, without even a ghost of her usual bravado. Bobbi nodded.

“Neither of you need to go in there,” said Seph calmly.

“Yes, I do,” Bobbi responded. “May would kill me if any of you got ‘et on my watch.”

“Yes, well, I’d rather not get… ‘et… either. I’m supposed to be leading a dig in three weeks. Tends to make students grumpy when they don’t get to go on a dig. Tends to make me grumpy, too,” Seph’s voice was light, but not warm enough to chase away the chill Fitz felt.

The lock clicked open quickly under Fitz’s fingers: They moved from memory and were as smooth as they used to be. _Almost as if they work better without me._ He choked on a nervy laugh as it crossed his mind. 

Fitz was in the room before anyone had a chance to stop him. 

Seeing the damned inscrutable rock in the center of the room left a cold hollow place in his gut. He clenched a fist and walked over.

Behind him, Seph entered, Bobbi following on her heels. Skye lingered in the doorway, shifting with unease. There was a gasp and a hum from Seph and the rock face shimmered, but it didn’t wash down the way it always did. The rock stood tall. 

But, it reacted to her sustained hum with that shivery shimmer. It looked like an antique mirror, silvered and pitted and when she stopped the sound, it became simply rock again.

“What the hell…?” He asked. “It’s never done that before.”

Seph stepped forward slowly. There was an air about her of reverence and awe. Horror and fear. And…. “Holy hell. When she said artifact… This would be one of those myths I never thought….” 

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Bobbi… Do you remember that temple where you found me?”

“You mean that place that May sent me to looking for you?”

She dragged her fingers along the plexiglass a dreaminess in her gaze as she stepped the circumference around the rock. “It was an amazing dig. This beautiful site on the edge of nowhere. A temple to a nameless goddess. It was between a meadow and a river. Nearby, on the other side of the water, there was a complex of caves. I don’t know if you remember, Bobbi, but there was this granite and obsidian pedestal in the heart of the holiest place in the temple. It had a depression in it with a residue that defied identification.” 

She paused and knocked on the plexiglass with one knuckle, “Sometimes it was as hard as the stone that cradled it. At other times it shimmered like water. No one could get a sample, but someone suggested that it could be a trick of the light, that the faintest hint of dew was collecting there. Someone else suggested it might have been the barest hint of liquid mercury or something. Quartz or mica in the rock. No swab ever came up with anything. And we couldn’t seem to scrape anything up out of the depression. 

“I did all I could to document the site -- Apparently there was some disagreement about which country owned the island we were a wee bit too close to the argument. I'd been watching the fight move closer.

“Thankfully for us, Mel had not only had a bad feeling but had a good idea in sending you, Bobbi.” She turned to Fitz and Skye with a smile. “Bobbi helped us hide everything before getting my entire team out. Even so, after we left, I doubt that one stone remained on another. But I’d been debating with my colleagues about the place, whether the depression was a scrying pool or….” She skimmed her hand over the enclosure and the shimmer concentrated in the area of her hand. “The resting place for a Hades Gate.”

The ripple on the face of the stone followed her as she paced along. “This means I was right about that unnamed, terrible goddess. I was right about the river and the caves….” She looked horrified and fascinated and hopeful. “How in the blazes did you get your hands on a Hades Gate? An actual doorway to the Land of the Dead and the Prison Tartarus?” 

“... You’re joking.” Bobbi’s voice was dead flat.

"I’ve never seen one before. I’ve only heard of them from legend. That traditionally rocks like this were supposed to have been placed along the rivers that led to the underworld. Colleagues suggested they were signposts, but what if they --or the ones deep inside the caves, in temples, were actually gates? To Tartarus? To the realm of Hades? Smaller ones allowing communion with and offerings for the dead? The question now, though," she whispered, “is which one are you?”

“Simmons isn’t dead.” Fitz broke in. That pang in his chest again. She turned to him, head cocked. “You said so yourself. You… that thing…”

She nodded. “So I did. “

Bobbi put her fists on her hips. “You showed him your thing? He believed?”

Skye snorted. “Her thing?”

“It’s part of how she finds people,” Bobbi said softly. “Don’t ask me how it works. But, if you tell her about them, somehow it helps.”

“So,” Skye snarked from the doorway, “If I were to tell you about Billy Proctor from third grade who gave me my first kiss only to tell me that he couldn’t be friends with an orphan?”

“Daisy,” Seph snorted, a strangely tuneful sound. He could almost hear a ghost echo behind it, “You don’t need me to tell you that he’s fat with four kids and two ex-wives, living in Des Moines. I’m sure you’ve been following that trainwreck like a daytime soap since you first started hacking.”

“How do you know that? You are psychic.”

“Echolocation. String theory.” Fitz stated before Seph could say anything. 

Bobbi blinked again. “That’s how you explained it to him?”

“Can’t say it works for everyone, but science for the scientist.”

“And philosophy for a philosopher?” Bobbi raised an eyebrow.

Seph chuckled and ran her hand down the clear wall between her and the stone. “When in Rome…” She paused, thinking about her own response before the chuckle gave way to choking giggles. “Really,” she gasped between laughs. “Not Kairon. Kerberus?” The face of the monolith shimmered and arched an inch towards her her hand, but no further. Still the movement reminded him of an old dog leaning in for a scratch. “Kerberus it is.”

“Why is it doing that?” Fitz asked, at a loss for the monolith’s behavior.

“It's saying hello. It won't open for me, but it will say hello. Will you Spot?”

“What??”

“Say hello to Kerberus, the Hades Gate.”

“First you tell us there was more than one of these things. Now you tell me it has a name?”

“Where do you think the myths come from? Stories of the ferryman and a three-headed guard dog?” She hummed again and the whole rock face shivered. “But, the tone is the key. Kerberus will … rest.. for the right song.” She turned to Daisy in the doorway. She hummed a different tone to the Inhuman hacker. Seph didn’t pluck a string, but Fitz could almost feel the vibration that made it’s way to Daisy who startled, put out her hands, and rumbled back. The stone in it’s cage washed down the plexiglass walls forming a dark silver pool in the lower part of it until Daisy pulled her hands back as though burned. It almost reluctantly reformed into a rock again.

“So, we have a door and a key, Orpheus.” Seph muttered, “Now, shall we go and find thy lady love?” 

“Wait, you intend to go through there to get Simmons back?” Bobbi looked appalled.

“Of course. She’d already be back if she could wait by the gate, wouldn’t she? So we’ll have to go in. Let’s gather supplies and we’ll reconvene here. My guess is that it would be best if you stay here, Skye. I don’t know what the doorway looks like on the other side, but perhaps if we could synchronize watches and if Bobbi could throw a line across, maybe we can get back through.” Seph said, gesturing to each of them and to the rock. 

“No.” Bobbi and Daisy responded simultaneously. “Absolutely not,” Daisy added. “We’ve already lost one scientist to that thing, I think Coulson -- and May! Oh God. Forget about a fit, May would have our heads,” said Bobbi.

Fitz shook his head. “This is why May sent her, right? She finds people. And I’m going with her. She’ll get us back. I know she will.”

Bobbi crossed her arms and frowned at the both of them, some feat while still keeping balanced on the crutches. “You weren’t in the Med,” she said flatly. “And if we’re going to send someone on this Quixotic trip, perhaps it should be someone who can fight and patch people up. You don’t know what condition Simmons may be in over there.”

“I can handle it,” Fitz said. “No offense, Bobbi, but you’re still on the mend. With two bad legs and a still healing lung, you can’t do much for Simmons if she’s in a bad way. And even with your spy tricks, we don’t know the terrain on the other side. You stay here and help Daisy. We’ll go into the heart of darkness.” He would brook no other answer.

Fitz could feel the weight of Seph watching the three of them and when he looked, her eyes were sad, even if the rest of her expression was neutral. “Mel sent me because I can find people. Bobbi, I’ve walked with death before, walked in death and walked out with someone I was asked to find whole and intact -- not quite so literally perhaps, but I have done it. There were just too many on my team in the Med to do alone. And Mel was right. Perhaps I should have read the signs and gotten us out sooner. But at the time, I thought I was close to an answer I’ve been looking for.” She sighed. “I’d feel safer knowing you were both on this side of the Gate, Daisy, Bobbi, to get it open if I can’t from the other side.”

“And I need Fitz. It’s his connection to Simmons that I’m following. If it is what I think it is on the other side of the gate, it’ll need to be him. He’ll be the key to getting her back once we’re over there. She’s alive. But we do have to hurry. What’s happening over there is hurting her. Badly. And we’re wasting time arguing over it.”

*


	6. The Abyss

An hour later, they were standing with their toes on the edge of the abyss. Daisy still looked dubious and irritable with Seph. “I don’t like being pushed into using my powers,” she growled to Fitz when he gave her a subtle elbow for staring. 

It wasn’t as though he didn’t understand. But, feeling this close to finding Simmons he was stumbling over himself -- and apparently his friends -- to get there. He wasn’t always good with the niceties of interpersonal communication. Still. He put a hand on her arm. “She trusted you with hers. It doesn’t make up for it. But, you could maybe tell her she owes you one.”

Daisy nodded slowly. “Just come back in one piece, Okay Fitz? I hope you find Simmons, but one way or another, just come back. I don’t think… this place just isn’t right without so much as one of you guys.”

He squeezed her arm. “It’s not the same without you either. But, if May trusts her judgement, this could be our chance. We’re bringing Simmons back to us. ”

“But how do you know you’ll find her? I’m sorry, but how do you know she’s alive?”

“I heard her Daisy. And she’s afraid.”

Daisy gave him a hard, disbelieving look, but he stood his ground until she patted his hand. He took it as a signal and dropped the contact. With his hand gone, she rolled her shoulders. “Alright.” She raised her hands in front of her. Bobbi and Seph seemed to take that as their cue and they stepped apart, Bobbi moving beside Daisy and Seph to Fitz. 

Standing this close to Daisy as she unleashed her power on the rock felt like being brushed by the reverberation of a bell, too much sound for noise, a vibration that even as it passed pushed the body and rung the soul. Something shifted in the atmosphere. Fitz’s ears popped. And the Gate, as Seph called it, became a dark shimmering pool that spread itself thin on the floor. Seph adjusted her pack and nodded to Bobbi and Daisy and then to Fitz. “Alright. Give us a minute. I’ll throw the ball through when we get to the other side. I’ll try to send a second one right after if it looks like it’ll take us more than an hour.”

“We’ve got the ropes ready,” Bobbi said. Daisy didn’t say much, the strain of sustaining the tone took all of her concentration. Seph stepped in first; Fitz followed.

*


	7. Armageddon

There was a feeling of cold weightlessness around him as his feet left solid ground and breached the portal. It lasted a second, along with a shift in pressure that left his ears unbalanced. He swallowed automatically and they popped just as his feet found solid ground again. He tripped forward several steps before finding his footing. 

He gasped when his eyes finally lifted. Before them stretched a vast plain lit by soft blue light. The sky was overcast, but something refracted in the firmament making the landscape as bright as a clear night with a full moon back home.

It was hard to tell colors in this light, especially as his eyes tried to adjust. He could feel smooth, rounded rocks beneath his feet, although the fine dust and the lighting hid most details. In the distance, there appeared to be a rise and perhaps a structure in that dark mass. There was certainly a light there, whether reflected or true, he couldn’t tell.

Seph pulled a tennis ball out of her pocket. She showed him the note written on it: _Stand By._

“Well it's going to be longer than an hour,” she said and she pitched the ball back through the hole in the universe. She then began rummaging through her backpack for another one and a marker. “While I get this together, how about you run a quick experiment.” He was game. He shifted his pack off his shoulders. 

“Now that you can feel the vibration and we know that you can touch Simmons, let's see if you can send a message. Maybe we won’t need the ball and could give them a more… precise way to know when we’ll need to have the door opened again.”

“It'll mean you need to concentrate on two things at once. Distil the image of that rise in the distance in your mind make it is clear and sharp as possible. Then, think of Daisy. Make her as bright and sharp in your mind as possible. Feel for the string that connects you and pitch that thought down that string.”

Complicated didn’t seem to cover what it sounded like. “First, May told you I had a brain injury, right?”

She shrugged. “Some people can’t grasp quantum physics sober on their best day. Some people can’t walk a straight line without falling down. From what I understand from May regardless of your injury you still do complex maths and problem solving in your head without aids. I’d say you’re probably doing well enough for this.”

He looked at her sideways. “You ever try this before?”

She stilled and her face shuttered. “It's been years the last time I did it. And the last time someone pitched a thought to me, it was my sister. The last thing I saw from her is an image of where she had been held.” She cleared her throat and pulled out her next ball and a marker. “Truthfully, it was never easy even then. But, if you could do it, it would save us in the long run.” She showed him the ball. “I’m going to write a message. You try sending your own to either Bobbi or Skye. We’ll see who gets theirs out first.”

Skeptical barely covered what he felt, but it was better than staring at her while she did what she had to. He pulled a pair of field glasses out of a convenient pocket and tried to get a better look at the ridge. There seemed to be some kind of structure up there. But what, and if it was inhabited was another question they’d be answering soon. 

He pulled the monocular and estimated the distance and time across the plain. About 5 kilometers to that near rise. At least an hour out at a slow walk. That is if that was the right direction. He focused on the ridge, he focused on the distance and the plain and as he made the image sharp in his mind, he realized there was something very odd and very wrong about the ground beneath their feet. What he’d taken for stones looked almost too regular and for a moment he wondered if they’d landed on some ancient cobbled road. He toed at the dirt and at a twig at his feet. 

And then he got a better look as to just what it was he was standing on. 

Bones. It was a plain paved with bones. And that stick was formerly someone’s femur. He was standing on remains. Hundreds of thousands of remains.

It was fair to say his manly screaming was what brought it to Seph’s attention. That and the sudden snap of that image: the rise and the structure and the field of dry bones flying across a thread and not the one between him and either Daisy or Bobbi. It bounced as fast as thought across the plain to the palace, because if this was the land of the dead, surely that which ruled it had it’s throne at the highest point. This time, he heard the tone as a feeling of fear came winging its way back to him. Fear and rage and… Jemma. She was terrified and enraged by the image he’d given her. 

It was so much that it choked him and he stood bent, facing the horror at his feet trying to catch his breath. Seph dropped what she was doing to come and rub his back. “Yeah, just noticed that, did you,” she said quietly. “At least we know you can send messages. Maybe we try again later with someone other than Dr. Simmons?”

He nodded. The force of trying to breathe brought tears to his eyes. “What the fuck happened here?” It took a bit to shove the words through a frozen throat, over a thick tongue and out tightly locked teeth.

“Welcome to Megiddo.”

“You mean the plain in Israel?” She just stared. “Are you fucking kidding me?” His question was almost as explosive as her laugh had been in the lab but sounded even more strange echoing off of a floor of bones.

“So many religions have gotten tangled into one another. Many share core … myths, for lack of a better term. It helps that when they come in contact with one another or initiate outsiders into their ranks that some of those beliefs and mythologies bleed into one another. Megiddo is just one name for it. I’ve found thousands of names. But what it was originally called, like the name of that goddess I mentioned, is lost. Names disappear or change when texts are lost.”

She rocked him back a bit to catch his eye. He didn’t want to look into her face, but he also didn’t want to add to the nightmare he felt himself awake in by losing what little he had eaten in the mess those few hours ago. Looking at her he found that she was crouched beside him on the balls of her feet, perfectly balanced in a deep pliet. 

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked. He shrugged. “Old gods never die. They just change form. They’re still worshiped, they’re still revered. We just don’t always see that’s what we’re doing. Ever cross yourself when you pass by a graveyard? Hold your breath and say a prayer in passing for the dead? To whom was that sent? To your ancestors? To a god who watches over the dead? Think about it.” He’d rather not, thanks much, but she did have a point. “Here we are in one of the places that started us thinking about what the underworld would look like. Can you imagine just how old these bones really are, Agent Fitz?”

It boggled the mind. That and how many people must have died here to pave a whole plain with the dead. She looked at him for a long moment, before letting them both drop into positions they could easily raise themselves from. “We’d better get going. Staying out here in the open isn’t a grand idea. And we’ll need to get back to the portal in about three hours. That’s as much time as I gave us to get there, find her and get out.”

Now that he was looking, he realized the portal had closed. “Alright.”

Seph glanced around them and shivered. “Funny, I’ve been in enough graveyards and battlefields that usually it doesn’t bother me. Bones don’t generally bother me. I’ve excavated far too many. Most of those places have an odd feeling, but this… this bothers me. I could swear we’re being watched, Agent Fitz. And the gaze is not kind. There’s something wrong in the air… Do you feel it?”

There was something… off about the way the air felt, but to put a finger on what, he couldn’t. “Let’s get going,” his voice was a whisper. “This spot is exposed. I can’t see anything here, but … that doesn’t mean anything.”

She nodded. They both re-shouldered their packs in silence and headed for the cliff. Their feet beat a steady hollow rhythm against the dust covered bones punctuated by sharp clatters when a loose something Fitz didn’t want to identify got kicked by either of them.

It took about 20 minutes, but they practically skidded over a low-lying marker Jemma had left. At least he assumed it was recent and Jemma based on the precision with which the small pile of bones had been placed. A skull, a couple of disks he assumed were kneecaps and a small cairn of vertebrae with a thick thigh bone pointing in the direction of the rise. His assumptions were confirmed when he found a scrap of fabric held down by one of the patellae. He recognized it well, a scrap of the shirt she was wearing when she’d disappeared. He’d memorized the pattern after a few repetitions of her departure and their almost something on the screen.

He felt a small hysterical laugh bubble up in the back of his throat. “I guess we have confirmation about which way she went.”

Seph patted him on the shoulder.

They continued on in near perfect silence for another half an hour before realizing that the distance between them and the rise didn’t seem to be getting all of that much smaller. 

Seph growled. “I was afraid of this.” They paused to take sips from their canteens and reassess their location. 

“Optical illusion,” he agreed. He glanced at Seph before, as surreptitiously as possible, trying to “echolocate” Jemma through the thread between them. The feeling was even stronger than before. As was her confusion. One thing he could confirm though. “It’s not that much further,” Fitz said.

Seph had a grim smile. “Very smart, Agent Fitz. This place is going to play tricks. We better stay sharp.”


	8. Sepulcher Rock

They almost ran into the base of the cliff. One minute the distance seemed insurmountable, and then there they were, staring up at what looked like an uprise of basalt, blacker than midnight in the twilight world. The cliff-face was sheer, angular. He’d seen similar back home, generally comprised of smaller columns. This appeared to be a single, enormous column. 

The air here felt both hot and cold and moist; he could almost see the lens it created, and looking back across the field of bones behind him, he shivered. The illusion that had made the distance to the mesa seem so far, now made the plain appear to be filled with spectres. His heart raced as he looked back into an endless sea of pale figures too distorted to see features. The feeling of being watched increased.

Seph put a hand on his arm. “Better keep focused on the objective.”

They followed along the scree at the base until they came to a place where smaller columns had risen beside the mesa-like grand steps. And perhaps they were, for a giant. The two of them by silent agreement began to scrabble up the sharp rock, Seph placing pitons as they went and securing a rope. Fitz hadn’t done much rock climbing in his life and about half-way up vowed that if they survived this, he would never do it again. He was not out of shape, in fact he was in better shape than he had ever been after what was needful since joining the field. But this was not something he had ever prepared for and it left his muscles and his lungs burning.

At the top, he couldn’t help flopping down on the ground gasping like a fish and staring up into the strange sky. He felt oddly gratified to hear Seph also struggling to breathe. 

“Shite,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” she replied.

Out of the blue he asked -- and then laughed breathlessly as blue is the only color he’s been able to see in this forsaken world -- “Why so many names, Seph?”

There was a rough scratch against the dirt and he assumed she’s shrugged. He didn’t roll his head her way to look. “Names are things we give ourselves. They’re things others give us. I have too many and some ancient goddess has none. Or none that anyone felt safe speaking or writing down. But, truthfully? I'd take almost anything over my given first name. Judith.” She huffed, but there was no real force behind it other than her own heavy breathing. "Mel tells me it's a condition you might acutely understand, Agent Fitz."

Fitz let that roll through the rattled cage he called his brain, giving himself a precious minute to collect himself and then rolled back over onto his hands and knees. From here he could see the true vastness of the plain. Endless to the curvature of the world, and all of it looked like death. Before them, on the highest point of the mesa stood an enormous grass-covered cairn with what looked like a short rock tower piled on top of it. There, on the highest point, a pyre burned. Although, what it burned, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He poked Seph and gestured to her to stay quiet. Some instinct said it was probably a better thing to keep as silent as possible. He was going to call it instinct. Calling it fear only made the tightness in his throat worse.

There was no going back. Not without Simmons, anyway.

*

The great black doors were stories high and he was thankful they were open. He didn’t fancy their chances of getting them open without an impressively large cadre of machines. However, their being open didn’t bode well for their arrival being a surprise. Beyond the threshold he could see nothing for darkness. He put a hand on Seph’s arm and dug out a pair of chem lights, cracking them. He handed one to her. With a nod to one another, they stepped into darkness….


	9. Black Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abandon all hope ye who read past here. 
> 
> This is the scene I put the tags in for. It gets even darker and possibly difficult for some viewers. If you're faint of heart or delicate of stomach...

And came out the other side in an incongruously firelit hall. Torches burned brightly returning orange to the spectrum. Walls rose to a great corbeled ceiling, every inch of which was decorated with some unfamiliar night sky. The stones of the walls were large and fitted with micrometer precision. The corridor stretched before them and behind them once again infinitely with alcoves every few meters down. 

Seph pulled something small from her pocket and marked the wall on either side of the hall with a surreptitious x. From his own pocket, he pulled a ball of twine and attaching an end to one of the sconces they headed down the corridor. Their footsteps, no matter how softly they attempted to step, seemed to ring through the space. 

Each alcove contained a small altar space and a softly illuminated stained glass window. The offerings on the altars were faded, dusty and unkempt. But, each window was beyond masterwork, to the point of near reality. On one side, the stained glass bore images of paradise; the other perdition. One of the first he saw was of lush green fields; another had palaces on sun-dappled hills. There was an image of a fertile river valley. Clouds and winged beings. Across the hall, they were different: Torture, cold fire and one window a mere dark void.

Light from each of these “windows” dappled the floor of the corridor, becoming a riot of colors where they met in the middle. He found himself walking that middle line, too cold to walk one side, and strangely too warm on the other, even if it was likely all in his head.

Finally, the infinite hall came to an end abruptly, again, ending at a pair of doors. These were merely a handful of meters high, made of what looked like iron, and decorated with images of judgement, separating wheat from the chaff. He recognized Anubis and the scale of hearts in one corner, an angel dividing sinners from saints in another panel, but there were so many.

Seph licked her lips and reached for the handles -- a pair of figures whose expressions were somewhere between ecstasy and agony, but Fitz stopped her. He needed to do this. He reached out and barely touched a handle. The enormous doors opened silently.

The air that rolled over them was oppressive. The stench of carrion and moist earth hit him like a fist. This was the smell of fresh death and of old murder: the iron tang of fresh spilt blood, the stink of a three-day old corpse, of late decay. He closed his eyes and willed his belly back below his ribs. Seph put a hand on his back. 

He blinked.

The smell was less somehow, but the humidity remained. And he got notes of rotted fruit now. 

The room beyond was a great hall fashioned after one he’d seen in a laird’s castle as a child on some school trip. On a raised platform in the distance was a throne in shadow and beside it a set of scales.

Between the door and the high seat, a great feast was laid out. The food, long spoiled and rotting, like the guests at the table. The guests he was horrified to recognize. And although some of the bloated faces he knew were indeed deceased, several he still had to comfort and remind himself they were still among the living. “You are not real,” he whispered it out loud, his voice and accent so thick his own mum wouldn’t have recognized it.

But they stayed there, dead eyes watching, the bloated corpses of friends and family he’d always felt he’d somehow betrayed. Here was his mum, a dagger in her breast. There was his father with a rope around his throat. Further on sat Coulson, Daisy, May. Even Ward was represented. 

And at the head, most terrifying visage of all, sat Jemma. She was wet, her skin waterlogged. She looked like she had drowned. He wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but those dead eyes felt full of accusation and hate. They had all suffered something, each one dead according to the ways he’d failed them. And Jemma, she’d drowned despite him. Because of him.

She once told him that whether by pillow, water, or crushed larynx all these deaths shared something in common -- being unable to breathe. Suffocation. Asphyxiation. Forget the name. Forget the mechanism. It was all about being airless.

Despair crept in. Jemma. He’d failed her again. Fatally. Whether he drowned her in his love or drowned her in his pain, whether she’d drowned in the ocean or drowned in the hurt of the last year, he’d suffocated the good between them. He had. 

He was so lost in the image of these dead faces, in his own internal drowning, Seph’s tugging didn’t make an impact. She tried to flick his heartstrings, a reminder that that image was not Jemma, and that only served to bring his rage. He turned to push her and, facing the living rather than the dead, he suddenly couldn’t remember the despair anymore. But he still felt the echo of something through the reverberating line between the two of them, between him and Jemma. Between him and friends back home. 

“Clever,” a voice boomed from the other side of the room. “But ultimately useless.”

He still could not see clearly the chair at the other end, but it sounded like the words came from there. Seph gestured to carry on, although he wasn’t sure why they weren’t speaking when there was someone acknowledging their presence. Still, he followed her lead, skirting the table widdershins. Heads turned and eyes followed his movement. He felt despair rise again but he squared himself. If there were something he was uniquely accustomed to it was perseverance, pushing forward, despite fear, despite despair.

As they moved closer, two spiral staircases revealed themselves flanking the high seat on either side. One ascending, one descending. “Somehow, when I had the _kore_ taken, I had a feeling more would come.” That same booming voice from before echoed through the hall. A figure stepped from behind the shadows of the chair, a tall well-formed man with chiseled, if cold features. His hair was white, his skin in the same base tone range as Seph’s, lighter perhaps, if only for the gloom and the soft grayness of death. Blood did not flow through those veins, not as Fitz knew it, as the man’s skin was marbled by black veins. His eyes were a thin ring of unnatural silver around a black as deep and dark as the space between stars.

There was a smirk on the man’s face. “You wish to take her. You both have already bought passage back out of these realms. Why do you think you can afford to take another?”

Fitz stared at the man, a strange calm filtering over him, even if his opponent appeared menacing. “We can.” He said with confidence, cocking his head. There was something about the man, the longer he looked, the less afraid he felt. 

Death seemed to sense it and gave the pair a gimlet stare. “Do you want to know what she saw here? The room was cold, white. Bodies lay on metal. The room was vast and each body was someone whose life she felt responsible for. You were among them. You were here, standing half-dissected, brain matter exposed, heart in your hand. You stood here in judgement of her. I needed to say nothing. As horrified as she was about the rest of those bodies, yours brought her to her knees.” Death’s eyes were thoughtful, he showed his teeth. “I don’t think she gave me form. She didn’t even see me approach as she stood there trying to shove your parts back in you, get your cold heart beating again. And there you were, eyes accusing. I think, if she had looked up, I would have been you, saying all the things she only says to herself.” 

“We judge ourselves,” Fitz said quietly. Seph laid a hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t look her way. “We judge ourselves, but we fear the judgement coming from those closest to us.”

That toothy smile became a knife’s-edge grin. “Indeed, little broken scientist.”

“And here is where you judge what weighs on our hearts.”

“Indeed. So, surrounded by the things you fear, the things that weigh your soul, the things you have done, what will you be able to do to win her soul home? What can you offer in trade? I’ll give you a moment.” Death leaned back against the chair, languid. He could afford to wait. They were in his domain afterall.


	10. Orpheus and the Heartsong

Fitz’s fingers flexed in thought, running a pattern in keys, a fidget with small parts and formerly clever fingers, an arpeggio across frets. The thought of sense memory, of frets, stopped him for a moment. _Orpheus. Seph had said it hours ago when we were quite literally at Death’s door._ It wouldn’t be perfect, but maybe it might be enough….

He glanced back at the wreckage of a feast, at the dead eyes of his friends and family. “Seph,” he said quietly, “You find things when you need them. Can you find me an unbroken instrument somewhere in all of that?”

She nodded. 

He contemplated the image of the figure of death that stood before him. The man implied that his face changed - that who he saw standing in judgement of him was different from who Simmons saw, who Seph would have seen had she been the one to touch the door. He wondered how much this visage, half in shadow by the chair was influenced by what Seph had said about this realm before they left. Before he knew this was the land of the dead, before she mentioned Hades and invoked his classical education, would the figure that greeted him for judgement even have been a man? Would he have seen Simmons? Would the face watching him with eyes like the infinite sky have been his father’s? His own? 

As if he knew Fitz’s thoughts, Death flashed him another knife’s edge smile of teeth that glowed unnaturally in the darkness. 

“How is it accomplished?” Fitz asked, conversationally. “How does the door convert my fears into a clearly realized vision? Something that affects all of my senses?”

“Something that actually contains interactable objects,” said Seph, returning with a very familiar guitar, viola and bow.

“From my memories.” Fitz whispered, taking the viola and it’s bow for himself. His hands shook as he ran an experimental scale across the strings. It even smelled like rosin and warm wood and the faintest hint of old beeswax.

When they moved onto the bus, he’d sent his viola and guitar home to his mother. Not even Jemma realized he played. It was a secret he’d kept from her. The viola had lived under his bed the whole time he and Simmons had been flatmates. She likely knew the guitar. He’d taught himself when he decided it was the cooler instrument, not that he ever played for anyone but himself when he knew he was entirely alone. But, from a young age his mother had insisted on a classical instrument, the viola, to round out his education and so he played. 

Last year, his therapist had recommended taking up a stringed instrument -- again, but little he knew -- to help strengthen and regain dexterity. 

He hadn’t, much to his shame. Every time he started the letter to his mother asking to send the instruments to him, he changed his mind and destroyed the evidence of his request. It was a personal thing. The music and the shame.

Especially, as he listened to the true, strong sound of the instrument ringing, despite his wavering grip, because it was, in a way, a betrayal of himself to have denied it. The sound rang like his heart strings. Like a heart-felt sigh. 

He set his jaw. It wouldn’t be perfect. Between lack of practice and the still improving fingers, his grip wasn’t what it was. But …

He looked over to Seph, who, even with only that tuning check was looking at him with a measure of blatant awe. This was more personal than sharing Simmons with her. He felt a heat rise in his face. He hadn’t played for anyone since his early teens, let alone a complete stranger and a man who claimed to be judge for the dead. 

Her lips curved encouragingly. “You lead. I’ll follow,” she lifted the guitar. “Call it a feeling, but I think there’s a song you know will work.”

There was. A song that had never been heard by ears other than his own, but so much a part of that sound string that connected him and Simmons. Simmons didn’t know he’d written a song for her, but the song that called his fingers has always been hers. 

He lifted the viola to it’s spot on his shoulder. An old comfortable weight. He set the bow to the strings and regardless of shaking fingers, they rang true. 

He stared into the eyes of the man slinking his way around the throne to sit and listen with steepled fingers and played what Simmons was in his heart.

It started with a light little melody -- a happy little arpeggio that was warm like sunshine, warm like her smile. In the ten years he’d known her that melody evolved, sang a story of the times they shared. The music spiraled out from there. At times fast, others slow, the viola laughed and wept. 

Where his fingers faltered, he found himself playing the heartstring between him and Simmons, in the echo, he felt her weeping. And somehow, through a torrent of music from his very core, Seph followed. She played the guitar, weaving a counterpoint melody, one he occasionally heard the ring of heartstrings in. 

After a moment, he started to realize that what she was playing was _him_. It was so profoundly him and so intertwined with his song for Jemma, it was as if it were a vital component he hadn’t realized was missing until he heard it played. Just like you couldn’t have had him without Jemma. It made it complete. Half of a whole. It wasn’t just Jemma’s heartsong, it was _theirs_. He couldn’t figure out how she’d done it, but it almost didn’t matter. 

Tears were streaming freely down his face and his fingers were flying over strings in a way that ached but felt lovely and familiar. He was going to play this for Jemma when they got back. He was never going to deny his music again. Because just like denying Jemma, denying the music was losing part of himself.

And as he watched, the man on the throne who had looked so hard and intimidating, softened. His features, his expression. This intimidating man was moved to tears, and as the first tear fell, his face became Simmons’ face, became Fitz’s own face, became that of an old woman, a young boy, a very young girl, an old man. The shrouded face of the Saint-Gaudens statue watching the dead of DC. Faces he knew and faces he didn’t. Faces from old paintings and sculpture, faces from every place on earth. All of this before becoming the face of a man whose features were strangely familiar and ageless, even though he was certain he’d never seen him before. 

The man in the chair was speechless. He opened his mouth to speak but words didn’t form. Until finally he said, “Forgive me. I took your _kore_ looking to gain someone’s attention. I believed it would bring the right person to me. I didn’t anticipate it would ….” The man’s voice didn’t reverberate. It didn’t echo. It didn’t fill the room, although it left Fitz feeling cold and warm at the same time. The cool of an empty field, the warmth of a memory of night at a fireside with loved ones. There was a keen of loss there. “I may never find my _Kore_. Gone, I think. I simply have refused to accept it.”

He gestured to the staircase spiralling down. “Go. Find her and if you can, take her home with you. Just know that like Orpheus before you, once you have her, you can’t look back until you’ve crossed back into your world. No matter what you see or hear. If you do, all is lost.”

“I am both a warden here and a prisoner. There are other guards in place. This was meant to be a place of judgement, of just rewards whether paradise or perdition. And Tartarus was meant to hold a being until they atoned for their sins. It keeps one alive, but… She is not well. The only food and drink in this land are gifts made to the dead.”

Fitz headed for the stairs, Seph called out after him. “I’ll wait here. If you have trouble finding your way back, just pull the string.” He looked back. Seph was still holding his guitar and while he was standing in the same laird’s great room as before, the cursed feast was gone. And so was, he noted, the smell of carrion on the air. 

Seph looked small and lost standing there in the middle of the huge, mostly empty room before the dais and its occupant. 

“Go, Agent Fitz,” she said quietly. “you have someone to find. I’ll be here.” When he hesitated, she added, “Death, isn't frightening, it's judgement. And as you said, we are the harshest judges of ourselves.”

“Just call me Fitz.”

“Thank you. Fitz.” It sounded like goodbye. He offered her a little smile. She lifted his guitar. 

It wasn’t until he was already down the stairs that he realized he’d left his medical supplies with Seph in the great room. He hoped like hell that wasn’t goodbye.


	11. Personal Hell

The stairs spiraled down a good two stories without a handrail. Fitz would have hugged the walls but there was something vaguely biological coating them and his hind brain couldn’t decide if it was moisture and mold or if someone had just built stairs down some giant’s throat.

While the stairs continued down even further, he felt a sharp tug from the line that linked him to Jemma when he reached the first landing. He raced down the corridor, trying not to listen to the howls of the inhabitants of the doors he passed. He tried even harder not to peer in any of the windows of those doors. He didn’t want to get sucked into someone else’s idea of hell. 

Past a dark metal door behind which played something that sounded like infernal chanting to call cthulu into the realms and hoarse screaming, he heard Jemma. “No, please dear God, not again,” she sobbed. Over and over. 

He looked in the door. She was there, kneeling, covered in blood. He almost opened the door when he heard her scream “No! FITZ!!” 

From behind him.

He spun. Jemma was also in the room behind him, also kneeling covered in blood. For a moment her voice, terrified and full of tears, was coming from behind all of the doors, an infinite number full of infinite pain.

And then he stopped, took a breath, and listened for the heartstring. And the other voices seemed to fade for it’s ringing. He allowed it to drag him forward, to a door that, like the one upstairs, opened to his touch.

He stepped into… 

The old lab on the bus, except beyond the sliding doors -- behind him -- was a wall of dark water instead of the place where Lola should have been parked. The lab was trashed. Broken glass littered the floor and the cabinets are pocked with bullet holes. The staccato smack of gunfire sounded somewhere nearby and Jemma was on the floor, weeping. She’d curled in a ball around and beside his own corpse. It’s a strange thing to look down and see one's self bleeding out through a strafe of bullet holes. 

“You’re not real.” She hissed it through gritted teeth. She looked up at him, hands and face smeared -- caked really, with gobbets of blood, dried and fresh. “Go away.” Her teeth were fierce and white, bared at him. “You’re just another vision this place has sent to test me. Leave now. Maybe this time you’ll survive.” 

She looked down at the corpse’s head in her lap -- his head -- and choked on a sob. But, the corpse seemed to be fading, and suddenly she was scrambling to hold it there, in her reality. “No! Nononononono…..” Her wail rang and echoed through the space. “No. Fitz!!!” She buried her face in her gory hands. “Not again. I don’t want to see this again. Please, don’t make me do this again.”

He approached. She scooted herself under the lab bench as far as she could get. “Get away. Please, just go.” She pled. “I’m death. I’m your death, just go.” She was all bones and angles, barely held together with grime and gore. She pulled herself into a small ball and wept.

There’s a tap in the corner and towels in the cabinet, just where they left them. Antiseptic wipes third drawer down where Jemma always kept them. He put the viola on the desk above her and without a word gathered supplies. He returned to her, carefully not looking behind him. And he began to clean her face and hands. 

She was shaking, eyes huge and luminous and sunken in her face. “Why are you doing this? You never do this. You don’t even like blood. You just die over and over again. Sacrificing yourself over and over. And I can’t make it stop. Even if I get in the way, you still die. What are you…” He wouldn’t lie, the gore did make him sick to his stomach, but instead he stayed focused on his task.

“Because, this time, Jem, it’s me. I’m here to take you home.” She stopped altogether. Her hands, her breathing. She just watched him. 

When her voice came back, when she was almost clean, it was raw and rough and barely above a whisper. “You’ve never shown up with a viola before,” she said and her tongue darted out to wet her clean, cracked lips. “You’ve come to me with gadgets and guns. The berserker staff once. But you have come to save me. Again and again.”

“Jem,” He said it softly, carefully, “You don’t need me to save you. You just need me to remind you that this isn’t real. Stop punishing yourself. Stop punishing yourself for your own mistakes, but also stop punishing yourself for mistakes I’ve made.... And if you do, I’ll make you a promise. I’ll work to stop punishing myself, too.”

The faint shimmer of tears wavered in her eyes. “But…”

“No buts. Come on, Jemma. Let this go. We fell, it wasn’t your fault. I gave you my last breath and you saved me with it. For as many times as I’ve stepped in the way for you, you’ve done the same for me. You’re the bravest of us. We work together, Jemma. Always and better together. And I’m so very sorry for the wrongs I’ve done you. We haven’t had a good couple of years, but we’ll get better. I know we will.” 

“What about the visions, Leo?” Her voice was even softer when she said his first name and he wondered to himself if this was the first time he’d heard it where she hadn’t been irritated with him, just unsure. So terribly unsure. “This place… I could feel you. I could feel you in the lab back home -- I could see it, I could feel your sadness. So very heartbreakingly sad. I made myself sick with tears when I felt it. I felt the middle of myself ringing and I could see you on the plain of bones. You were terrified. And then there was a banquet of the dead --” She choked and paled. He wasn’t certain it was possible for her to be more pale, she was already so faded. “And then I heard the music. This amazing song and it felt like you were here. And for the first time in what felt like forever, I had hope.…. When it stopped, I... I couldn’t let it go….” She looked at her hands, clean now, but by her expression, she still saw blood there. “It had pulled at me and I pulled back. And suddenly there you were and you were dying again and I….”

“But how did I see those things? How did I hear that song? How are you here?”

“I’ve been looking for you.” His own voice was washed out. He reached out fingers hovering millimeters from her face. “Like this.” He didn’t strike the string as hard as he had before, but gave it a soft caress. It rang between them and her eyes half lidded as their breath caught as one. 

“What was…”

“String theory. Echolocation. I’ll explain it better, if you’ll….” he offered her his hand.

He coaxed her out from under the bench. The room was back to rights again. The cabinet doors were unscarred, glassware sat at the ready along the wall. Things were quiet; there were no gunshots. Various machines whirred and clicked and dripped. The fan on the PCR clicked on and clicked off. It was peaceful. “Don’t look back, Jem. Not for anything.”

She nodded and tucked her face into his shoulder. She breathed him in. “None of the other versions actually smelled like you. I should have known.” 

He chuckled. “Well, Jem, Baby Girl, forgive me for saying but you smell awful.” She batted his shoulder weakly.

He snatched up the viola and bow in one hand and wrapped his other arm around her, finally feeling everything was right with his universe. Her gait was shaky, but he made it to the door, which slid open before them, the wall showing the garage beyond with Lola’s cherry red paint glistening; through the door however was, a blackened hall. She shivered as they passed through the door. He fought the urge to look back and see if the room itself changed its illusion.

They made it back to the stairs step by wary step. It stayed put, but he was certain that he was going to be some resistance to taking Jemma from this place. He had to choke on a laugh. Here they were creeping through the halls of this nightmare prison, Jemma barely able to stand. And all he had to defend them with was a viola and bow. All because he’d rushed off without taking his pack. 

He should have strapped on a gun.


	12. Into the Light

Before he’d reached the top of the stairs, out of a shadowed alcove, came a figure out of his nightmares. Perhaps when he was a child, he'd seen some awful film. Since the rest of the place seemed to pull from the mind why wouldn't the guards that so menacingly melted from the shadows look like a combination of Tim Curry’s Devil from Legend and a humanoid cockroach from some science fiction horror mashup. 

Jemma gasped and tried to pull him back down the stairs. “Don’t look back,” he reminded her. The creatures approached and he put himself between them and Jemma. 

“Fitz. No.”

“Trust me.” He made sure Jemma was securely behind him. 

He felt her press into his back. “Fitz. I think they’re behind us, too…” 

“Don’t look,” he repeated before placing the viola to his shoulder and striking up the first notes of a Paganini sonata.

His fingers ached and it wasn’t as overwhelmingly soul-driven like his song for Jemma, but it was fierce and it was light and it drove the monsters back into the darkness. He took three steps forward, hoping Jemma would follow without turning back to her to check. He marched up the stairs, passing the alcove where the pair had disappeared as if they never were. 

Behind him he swore he heard Jemma scream. His heart and his bow stilled. “Jemma??” He fought the impulse to whirl around.

“Fitz,” she hissed almost in his ear. He felt her pressing into his back. “I swear it isn’t me.” Her fingers tightened in what of his shirt she could grasp around the edges of his tac-vest. He flexed his fingers on the bow as the scream ripped up the stairwell again. From the darkness, glowing eyes emerged.

He pulled the bow across the strings in warning. Something like claws ticked on the steps behind them. He picked up the Paganini from where he’d left off, playing as fiercely as he could. The clicking stopped.

“We should get going, I think,” said Jemma, giving him an encouraging push. “That was certainly something different. By far.” Her voice shook a little.

He barely nodded, not wanting to adjust his grip on the viola, especially not while playing, and he didn’t want to stop playing. If this was an effective method of keeping the security of this place at bay, he wasn’t going to stop again. Not for anything. To save his fingers some from the effort of light and fast, he switched to Barber’s Adagio for Strings in D and found a new pain in sustained and firm. But he kept at it. Step by step, back up the stairs until they found themselves…..

It had been the great hall, he was sure of it. There was his pack and Seph’s and there was Seph, kneeling with a small girl probably six or seven years old. But the room had changed. Instead of the fife hall, it was now the grand ruins of a temple. The dais sported a carved depression full of shimmering rock. His breath caught. 

Colonnades surrounded the tumbled-down walls of the space that was likely a perfect match to Seph’s memory of the Holy of Holies from the temple of... _The terrible goddess._ He locked his feet in place to keep from turning about to take it all in. Still, what he could see was magnificent. 

It was dusk beyond the columns and impossible to see beyond that, but there was a steep incline towards where pair of doors stood, incongruously intact at the far wall. A black and red clay dust covered everything and the place smelled of heat and dust and sage. The dais was flanked with burning torches. He didn’t look back, but glanced to the side to where the other stairs would have been. There was a run of them, 12 at most, that seemingly ended in thin air. 

If it weren’t for the packs and for Seph, he would have thought he’d gotten turned around and found somewhere else instead.

The man from before was nowhere in sight, but in her place was the girl whose hand Seph was holding for dear life. The girl was dressed in a long nightdress covered in from top to bottom in colorful smiling carebears. Her feet were bare.

Again, Fitz felt he knew her -- this face, looking so much like Seph’s own, even as she stared hostility over Seph’s shoulder to him. She looked grey, like recent death. But, if this were Seph’s sister, that time had long passed. 

“Seph,” he said it quietly, ending a sustain with a dampening finger across the strings. “Seph, I have Jemma. It’s time to go.” He stepped fully into the room, reaching back to pull Jemma in with him. Jemma tossed him a look of confusion, stumbling forward. He shook his head. Another explanation for another time.

“No,” the woman’s voice was clogged with tears. “I’m going to stay here.”

“Seph, remember. This is an illusion. Conjured from your mind. We have to go.”

“Anthea. Fitz, this is Anthea. My sister.”

He started to argue when the little girl attempted to pin him with a look. He raised his bow to the viola he had yet to put down in defiance. “She knows I’m not real,” said the girl, her voice echoing through the space. It was sweet and piping with the same strange accent that Seph had. All round and sharp in ways that made his brain spin to make connections. Where from? “Why would you take this little comfort from her?” 

“Because I cannot leave her behind either. I’m more afraid of the wrath a mutual friend of ours than of yours, Death.” He shrugged glibly, “A fate worse and all.”

The little girl laughed; it was strange hearing the man’s laugh coming from the girl’s throat. The voice befit the form again, though, when she spoke. “Tell your friend she’s bartered herself for you. You and your Lady, Jemma Simmons, escape. She stays here with me for a time. With her long lost sister. I can show her everything she’s been searching her life for. For answers. For history. For peace. Take her gift and go. I’ll even, gladly, open the doors for you to return home.”

The girl lifted her hand and beside him, the shimmering pool rippled and became the gate. 

“Seph….” he hissed. 

She finally turned and smiled as her eyes lit on both of them. “Ahh, Dr. Dr. Jemma Simmons. Pleased to finally meet you.” Her voice was choked, her face was wet her eyes red. “Are you ready to go home now?”

Beside him, Jemma nodded and stumbled into his arm. “Jemma,” he said softly, “This is Dr. Seph Anthony. She helped me find you. She’s going to help me get you home.” He turned back to Seph, feeling almost as desperate as he’d been combing archives for a way to bring Jemma back from the rock. “Seph, your sister wouldn’t want you to stay here. She’d want you to go home and live your life.”

“You don’t know my sister,” Seph’s face hardened. “You couldn’t. She’s been dead for so many years. She was so full of life. Now she can be. Again. At least for a little while.”

“She can’t. And I don’t need to have known her. You’re stronger than this Seph.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

“You can’t have lived through what you told me and not --”

“Go, Fitz. Stop arguing. I’ll find another way home. If this isn’t it, I’ll find my way back. I know I will. I always do. But let me have this. Let me have this. Just for a little while. And tell Mel and Bobbi to take you to the Med. To where this --” she gestured around them, “is. It’ll be a lovely vacation for the two of you. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll meet you there after you’ve both had a chance to recoup. You can explain to me all of the mechanisms I’ve ever dug up. All of the machines in the gods and gods in the machines. Just… Please, Fitz. Take Jemma and go. Take Jemma and let me have this. It’s where I’m supposed to be.”

He waited a beat and then nodded. He put down the bow, pulled Jemma by the hand and stepped to the edge. He pulled at a memory as strong as he could make it of Bobbi and Daisy, checking the vibration between them to make sure that they were on the other side of whatever this portal was. He could feel them, faintly, although he never expected them to feel as strong to him as Jemma did. 

It wasn’t until his foot was out over the black, shimmering pool that he heard Seph say softly, from somewhere close behind him. “Go, Fitz, Simmons. And never look back.”

And then he was tumbling, Jemma's hand clasped tightly in his through space and time.


	13. Epilogue

The little island on the Mediterranean was hot and dusty. Bobbi had warned Fitz of that. May had been shaking her head, even with the faintest quirk of a smile gracing her mouth. They’d delivered Fitz and Simmons to the island, as requested, providing them with maps and gear. “It’s a grand adventure,” Fitz had said, smiling broadly at both of them. Jemma just laughed. There’d been a lot of that lately. Smiles, laughter. Since he and Simmons had tumbled out of the rock, one face rippling unbidden by Daisy. The portal sealed behind them, not reacting to any coaxing of any kind. It was, for all intents and purposes, just a rock with strange hunks missing in no discernable pattern. 

Mel -- May and Bobbi had not been pleased to find out that Seph had been determined to remain behind. But, all May would say was “There will be some disappointed kids this summer.” 

He tried to describe what they’d seen. He’d written down every detail. Even the ones that hurt. And then he let it go.

He and Simmons, over her recovery bed had speculated at length what sort of interface, what kind of mechanisms had been going on behind the scenes in that world to make the images so real. They talked as if the weight of their history -- of their anger -- had never been. And, taking Seph’s advice, they didn’t look back, at least not to dredge up pain and anger, old hurts and deceit. 

Instead, they looked forward, calling on the past only for the things that made them smile. He called his Mum, he got his viola and his guitar back -- the viola from the other world had melted like dust in sunlight once they crossed back over. Once his hands recovered from the strain of playing for their lives, he spent hours playing every request Jemma could think of, his fingers growing stronger and more dexterous as she recovered from a month’s worth of mental and physical pain.

A year’s worth. More.

She’d been dehydrated, claiming that whatever water she had tasted like ash; and malnourished, all the food she put to her lips had been tainted and rotting. The wounds inside were harder to heal than that, though. And there were nights she’d wake screaming and he’d feel it ring through the bond that connected them. He’d race pell-mell from wherever he’d been banished to: his room, the lab, once from the common room couch to allay her fears. But, by summer’s end, she was ready, she said, to see something other than the walls of the base.

And he’d mentioned going to the Med. 

By the water where the helicarrier had dropped them, the air was sweet and tangy with the sea. They walked for hours from there to camp first in the lee of a little grove of twisted trees high up on a hill. The view of the sea from there was breathtaking. They watched the lights of boats on the water become stars in the sky as evening rolled itself into night. They talked in hushed tones of secret and sacred things; of science and magic and string theory and echolocation and of being lost in the stars until their voices and their tongues could no longer hold the weight of sleep. 

The next day, they walked to a village, had breakfast beneath the boughs of an old bay laurel; they asked for directions and flirted in the market while a stand of cypress watched them with reproach. Camp that night was in the ruins of another village, one lost not to time, but to the last war. They made promises only the stones and scurrying creatures in the darkness could hear.

Finally, on the third day, they crested a rise. There below lay the meadow and the stream. From here, Fitz could almost see the caves Seph had described. He tugged Simmons hand and they tumbled down the hill like a pair of children, chasing one another across the meadow to the soft undulation of grass and shadows that he was certain hid the entrance to Seph’s temple. 

They raced past it into the stream, giggling.

The water of the stream was bracing. Splashing through it, Fitz felt more awake than he had ever been. He looked to Jemma whose expression must have matched his, eyes wide and startled. Color seemed so much richer, more vibrant. While both of them were still as pasty as could be even after three days in the bright Mediterranean sun, Jemma’s hair was chestnut and auburn, her eyes almost shining copper coins. The faint pink of heat and exertion made her blossom and he kissed her there in the cold water with the green and gold of the meadow and its wild brush. 

When they parted, breathless, laughter bubbled up behind them. Startling as an explosion, as a flock of birds taking flight all at once. They whirled to the sound.

“About damn time,” said someone behind them. “I was beginning to wonder if you geniuses were every going to make it out at all.”

They turned -- not exactly behind -- to look at the figure, in shadow with the sun brilliant behind. She, it was a she, stood tall and straight, curls bouncing in the almost breeze. 

“I hope you brought something to eat. I’m half starved and it’s been a long walk home. Now, Agent Dr. Fitz, about those mechanisms….”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was heavily influenced by some side research I'd been doing on Hades, Persephone and, of course, Orpheus myths this summer. According to what I'd been reading, "Kore" is one of the names used for Persephone, since it was apparently not considered safe to invoke her name due to her relationship with death. Because of it, she occasionally goes unnamed even in her own temples; worshipers used euphemisms instead. "Kore," (I'm told) means "Maiden," which is her aspect when she is with her mother Demeter(.... I thought it was super interesting, but I am a huge nut for myth and folklore....). 
> 
> On a side note, I do have two ... I guess supplements to accompany this. I'm still cleaning up the one from Simmons' perspective. I'm hoping to put that up soon. There's also a "deleted" scene with Seph and Death if, anyone's curious.
> 
> Either way, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
